DVD Authoring Guide

[RobertH]

I have thrown together a guide for building a dvd using TMPGEnc Plus and TMPGEnc DVD Author at the request of a user, I figured some others may want to view this aswell so I'm posting it here in the mean time until PB can get it posted up to the community site.

Notes: Somehow my actual guide which was attached got erased / lost, however there are some really good ideas throughout this thread, I would strongly suggest reading over its entirety and then try one or two of the ideas below. Besides my guide was about a year an a half old by now.

[bobbysue]

While I find your guide correct, there is a much shorter route to take. I have been using my method now for 2 months and I have to say it is quicker and 100% perfect each time.

[vogelap]

Originally posted by bobbysue
While I find your guide correct, there is a much shorter route to take. I have been using my method now for 2 months and I have to say it is quicker and 100% perfect each time.

Do tell! Do tell!

[kernel]

Originally posted by bobbysue
While I find your guide correct, there is a much shorter route to take. I have been using my method now for 2 months and I have to say it is quicker and 100% perfect each time.

Ya, I'm sure there are a bunch of different ways to do this but if your not going to explain then theres no reason for you to even mention it

[DonK]

It's already in DVD Author to cut the commercials out. Also, the easiest way to accomodate for video too long is go ahead and make your "out of spec" dvd with DVD Author, then process it for about 20 mins with DVD2One in full disc mode. You can use DVD Shink, which is freeware, but to be quite honest I'm fond of DVD2One and haven't used DVDShrink.

I also use a PVR250. I set my audio to be 224k instead of 192. I set mine to ~6mbit usually, either 720x480 or 352x480, if I don't need high res, or if I'm doing some experimentation.

I didn't see your guide until I'd written mine, I don't do any reencoding whatsoever, since I record to the proper specs I need for dvd format.
My DVD Guide done without reencoding anything:

I've created multi-movie dvd's with my method, and no loss of synch, although I wouldn't recommend more than 2 movies that are 90 mins or less being compressed onto one dvd.

[kernel]

Originally posted by Weezul
I wouldn't recommend more than 2 movies that are 90 mins or less being compressed onto one dvd.

Why not more than 2?

[DonK]

2 reasons mainly:
1) If you're compressing that much video to fit on a dvd, the quality will suffer badly on video,
and
2) I put 3 movies on a dvd once just to see what it would do, and got massively bad pixelization and audio synch issues.

[kernel]

Are you using VBR? I believe that increases your likelyhood of getting sync issues if I remember correctly...

[DonK]

VBR, and Multiple cuts/edits are the biggest reasons why you get out of synch errors.

The key here is he is removing commercials, which means multiple edit points. The more you edit, the bigger problem you'll have with synch.

Mayamaniac: Try upping audio to 224kbps instead of 192. That might help.

I've always had problems with audio synch if the following conditions were true:

1) Variable Bitrate
2) Audio bitrate lower than 224
3) Multiple cuts and edits

[RobertH]

he cant be using vbr because he doesnt have a hardware encoder, wich is likely the cause, there are "problems" with the snapstream mpeg encoder for doing software encoding. while you wont notice the sync errors in snapstream you will notice them in other applications wich strictly adhear to the mpeg spec. more than likely the original video files have dropped frames or incomplete GOP structures and tmpgenc is rebuilding them from scratch causing the frame/audio sync to be lost. the only thing i could recommend in that case is to transcode the video into divx at a really high bitrate (so no compression artifacts) and then import it into tmpgenc and have it spit out a genuine mpeg file. most people that have the audio sync errors are those not using hardware encoders.

[DonK]

RobertH's got a point there... I use PVR250 so I don't use the software MPEG encoder.

good call!

[Mooneyass]

I'm having the same problem. I'm using 224 kbps audio, CBR, with no cuts.

Wes

[kernel]

Is there any other program besides both of those mentioned made by TMPGEnc that anyone uses to cut out commercials?

[DonK]

Originally posted by Mooneyass
I'm having the same problem. I'm using 224 kbps audio, CBR, with no cuts.

Wes

Are you using a PVR 250 or software mode?

[RobertH]

if you own a pvr250/350 you can get a small editor called nanopeg(i think thats what it is called, the website refers to it as wintv editor) from hauppauge it is available on the original cd and there is a patch for it on their website. But i think if you are getting sync errors in tmpgenc you will likely get them in any other mpeg edititing program, the only other method i have seen is to convert to some other format like dvix/avi and use one of the plethora of "free" tools for that then re-render it back into mpeg for authoring (very wastefull and will likely result in quality loss unless rendering to very highbitrate/non-lossy format)